Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a content playback technique of notifying a user that it is possible to view, by video-on-demand (to be referred to as VOD hereinafter), a content identical to a broadcast content that he/she is viewing.
Description of the Related Art
Recently prosperous amalgamation of broadcasting and communications allows a VOD server to archive content identical to broadcast content and distribute it so that a user can view them using VOD during the same period of time as the broadcast. That is, VOD allows even a user who has viewed a broadcast content starting halfway through to view a content identical to the broadcast content from the beginning.
In, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-046984, when a user views a broadcast content starting halfway through the program, the opening part of the broadcast content is distributed via an individual channel based on a request from the user, and the broadcast content is accumulated simultaneously. When playback of the opening part on the individual channel has ended, playback of the accumulated broadcast content starts so that the user can view the content from the beginning.
In, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-136974, when a user has performed viewing operation such as rewind during broadcast content viewing, an archive is searched for a content identical to the given broadcast content. If such content exists, the reception path is switched to play back the archived content. In addition, the archive is searched for the content before the viewing operation. If content identical to the given broadcast content exists, executable viewing operations are displayed on a screen.
However, when nearly all broadcast content is archived, the user is then notified of the existence of the archived content each time he/she selects a channel and this may annoy the user. For example, during so-called “channel surfing” where a user quickly changes channels searching for a content, user notification is supposed to be unnecessary.
To solve this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-046984 describes a method of viewing a content from the beginning but not determining whether to notify the presence of archived content. However, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-136974 cannot eliminate the above-described annoyance because screen display is performed when the existence of a content identical to a broadcast content has been detected.